De Villiers, Wiese lead Qalandars to steal last ball win from jaws of Sultans

SHARJAH: Lahore Qalandars pulled off a record 201-run chase on the very last ball of the innings courtesy of some beautiful batting display by opener Fakhar Zaman, skipper AB de Villiers and David Wiese at the Sharjah Cricket Ground on Friday.  

Qalandars won the match by six wickets against Shoaib Malik-led Multan Sultans. 

Junaid Khan put up a great show for the Sultans by taking three crucial wickets (Fakhar Zaman, Salman Butt and Agha Salman).

AB De Villiers comments after the match

"It got a bit closer than I hoped for at the end. I was fortunate in being able to take my time at the beginning of my innings. David Wiese takes a lot of the pressure off me, being a boundary hitter. I get very nervous. To the youngsters out there, my message is that it's ok to feel nervous in a situation like this, just take it one over at a time."

Despite Khan picking up key wickets at crucial moments of the game, his no-ball to Wiese overshadowed the performance.   

When Brendan Taylor left the stadium retired hurt, the match gradually shifted in Sultans' favour despite Zaman's 63 off 35.

But then came De Villiers aka Mr 360. An unbeaten fifty and a partnership from 98 from 7.3 overs with Wiese and a six off the last over, turned things for Qlaandars, handing them a six-wicket win. 

The duo shared eight sixes, taking an incredible 73 from the last five.

 First Innings

Lahore Qalandars' top-notch pace attack was taken aback by the Sultans' openers as the latter had all answers on every tactic adopted by the De Villiers led-11.

The feared trio, Shaheen-Rahat-Haris, failed to give the much-needed timely breakthrough as opener James Vince managed to score 84 off 41 with seven boundaries and six sixes on a 204.87 strike rate before being dismissed by legspinner S Lamichhane.

The legspinner also took the crucial wickets of skipper Shoaib Malik and Andre Russel after conceding as many as 46 runs in his four-over quota.